Organic Universe

Monday, March 9, 2015

The following blogs were built from October 2011 through August 2012 (see research list in left sidebar) and remain available for
research during these periods, ending in March 2015, where the project was moved and updated to one blog, see
here.

These sites as of this posting have generated over 800,000 visits, and provide an array of alternative news information and
transformation occurring during these times.

Everything that was posted here can still be followed exclusively through Twitter as one of five categories. (See widget in
sidebar.) Although, now, and because of the transformations occurring, I must move forward and reduce the workload, improve
focus, and provide a better platform that reflects the entire house as a course of action.

"It seems impossible to not know what our five senses are being used for. It has been learned that information must include an
array of the what we perceive as sensations for preception to occur, that is to say, so that we understand them in context
to our environment. Alternative media authors are rapidly working out the kinks in this chain where feelings have been
assumed and fed with useless sensational alterations. The truth however, is that these stigmas are not really sensations, they are
powerful centers entwined in the octave of life."

The following video compiles footage of 'signs of the times' from around
the world during February 2015 - 'earth changes', extreme weather,
meteor fireballs, and planetary upheaval.

The pattern of global
deluges continued last month as flooding again hit the Balkans, Greece,
Bolivia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Northwest, Australia, and
East Africa. February saw 'orange' snow, 'blue' snow and 'dirty rain' as
particulates from ever more erupting volcanoes and incoming meteors
continue to build up in the atmosphere. It's not just conditions above
ground that are changing: alarming numbers of whales, sea lions and
other sea creatures continue to wash up dead or dying on beaches around
the world.

February saw meteor fireballs ranging from flashes
that momentarily turned night into day over New Zealand, Florida and
Korea... to a long-duration bolide of comet/asteroid size that broke up
over the western half of North America. There were several major train
derailments in February, particularly in the U.S., where oil companies
are bypassing pipeline networks to transport fracked oil. We suspect
that many railway lines are deforming due to the increased seismic
activity.

More loud booms were heard and felt across the U.S. in
February. Although attributed to 'frost quakes', where water seeps into
the ground then freezes and cracks the bedrock, these localized booms
also happened in ice-free regions, suggesting that some other mechanism
is causing them. Besides strong earthquakes off Japan and along the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an unusually strong quake in central Spain sent
people running into the streets. Japan saw more snow records broken,
wild weather continued to pummel the Eastern Mediterranean, and the
Middle East was again snowed under.

THE major weather event in
February 2015 was the record snow and cold in the U.S. Northeast. The
South and Midwest were also hit hard, but the Northeast appears to have
had both its snowiest and coldest month ever, at least since since
record-keeping began in the mid-19th century. Meteorologists attributed
this to the meandering Polar Jet stream delivering a 'Siberian Express'
of non-stop winter storms from the northern Pacific down and across the
North American continent, but another factor could be super-cool air
coming down from the troposphere.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

New study finds hormone-disrupting chemicals found in pesticides,
plastics, and more driving staggering—and costly—human health problems

Hormone-disrupting
chemicals found in human-made products—from plastics to pesticides—are
causing health problems that cost society billions, a new study finds.

Published Thursday in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism,
the examination was conducted by eighteen researchers in eight
countries and is the first attempt to quantify the concrete costs of
these chemicals.

According to researchers, the costs come to more than $170 billion a
year in Europe alone—what they call a "conservative" estimate.

But beyond the dollar amount, the human health problems the study highlights are staggering.

"Global experts in this field concluded that infertility and male
reproductive dysfunctions, birth defects, obesity, diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, and neurobehavioral and learning disorders were
among the conditions than can be attributed in part to exposure to
endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs)," reads a summary of the research.

Nneka Leiba, deputy director of research for Environmental Working Group, points out
that endocrine-disruptors are found in common products around the
world: "Potent hormone disruptors such as bisphenol A, or BPA, are in
the lining of most canned goods and on many cash register receipts.
Phthalates are in PVC plastic, food packaging and personal care
products. And brominated flame retardants are ubiquitous in most
upholstered furniture."

Researchers found that, in the EU, intellectual disabilities caused
by prenatal exposure to pesticides containing organophosphates—which are
endocrine disruptors—were the number one cause of this high cost.

"The analysis demonstrates just how staggering the cost of widespread
endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure is to society," said Leonardo
Trasande, associate professor at New York University who led the study.
"This research crystallizes more than three decades of lab and
population-based studies of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the EU."

And Leiba notes "this is not just a European problem. Americans are
routinely exposed to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in everyday consumer
products."

Be
forewarned, please, that this will not be very pleasant reading,
especially if readers eat farm-raised fish and, in particular, salmon, a
highly-farm-raised fish. “Wild-caught” need not apply.

During my years of research, I’ve come across all sorts of information,
studies, and papers relating to animal vaccines, but this one sort of
“takes the cake,” in my opinion. Farmed fish are vaccinated because,
according to the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (NSVS),

Modern fish farming is highly industrialized and relies heavily upon
effective vaccines to minimize losses caused by infectious diseases. [1]

It looks like a PowerPoint presentation made by Trygve T. Poppe and Gunvor Knudsen of the NSVS.

However, before I go any further about fish vaccinations, readers ought
to know that there’s a 404-page book detailing the science of fish
vaccinations titled—what else but—“Fish Vaccination,” May 2014 published
by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The book obviously is a guide to
sustainable bio-production, disease prevention to reduce losses by
employing the use of antimicrobials and vaccinations, which are
considered effective in stimulating the immune system of fish.

Did
anyone ask the fish? That may sound like an unlikely and stupid
question, but in the NSVS PowerPoint presentation, slide 10 states,

Over the years fish farmers in Norway (and strangly [sic] enough to a very limited extent in other countries) have experienced severe and unacceptable side-effects in vaccinated fish.

[Hmmm! I could have told them to expect that; it’s a no brainer!] [CJF emphasis added]

There’s a photograph of a fish carcass with some sort of black
“diseased-like” flesh inside the abdominal cavity. Check it out for
yourself here (No. 12) .

The two slides following No. 12 show other fish health problems such as
generalized granulomatous peritonitis and abdominal lesions affecting
internal organs that often have heavy melanization, meaning causing
tissue to turn dark or black.

Something I find rather interesting, and bordering on empathetic, is the
remark on slide 15 that vaccines save fish lives [sounds familiar] from
acute death from bacterial infections, but some fish are sentenced to “life-long suffering due to severe pathological lesions in internal organs.” If that happens to fish from vaccines, what, if anything, happens to human vaccinees’ organs?

But, the real “kicker” is the remark on another slide about their having no consensus about pain perception in fish! Interestingly, though, there is a caveat that’s added, “…but anorexia and retarded growth are good indicators.” Anorexia in fish! Retarded growth too! Hmmm. Can autism occur in fish?

A fish liver granuloma [nodular inflammation in tissue] with multinucleated giant cell is featured on slide 16.

Slide 18 features the inside cavity of a fish that has to be seen –
really – to believe, and people eat vaccinated farmed fish! Or,
hopefully, diseased fish never make it to market. But, what if their
diseased organs are removed—are those fish marketed? I wonder, “What
will happen with vaccinated GMO fish?”

Candidly,
the PP presentation reports that the magnitude and significance of fish
disease cases are unknown and “certainly underreported” [probably just
like human vaccine damage] “as most cases have been closed in agreement
between the fish farmers and the vaccine manufacturer. This is
confirmed by The Norwegian Medicines Agency (NMA).” Since the fish
obviously don’t have legal rights, this sounds familiar and probably
similar to what apparently goes on at the U.S. Vaccine Court, in my
opinion.

Slide 20 has a chart of “Reported side-effects from fish veterinarians
to Norwegian Medicines Agency, 1996 to 2004.” Not knowing how to
interpret that chart correctly, I wouldn’t want to take a guess since I
was not in the audience to hear the presenters’ interpretation.
However, following that on the very next chart, we read two rather
disconcerting statements, I think:

Is this an example of testing where results obtained in experiments are far from what happens in real life?
[Again, human vaccine tests are fudged; we know that from some
whistleblowers [6] and a federal court case [5].]

Possible problems are not addressed well enough prior to release of the products [vaccines]

Whereas, on another slide (22) this most pointed of questions appears:

How can this happen as long as these vaccines are approved by NMA following their testing protocols (since 2001)?
[That seems like vaccine adverse event history just repeating
itself when human vaccines are used, especially in the USA as the VAERS
reports indicate.] [CJF emphasis added]

Apparently, a similar question can – and should be – asked regarding human vaccines and the testing/approval process.

At one point, slide 25, this blunt and self-searching question is asked about vaccines for fish:

Should we INCREASE the number of experimental fish for vaccine testing
prior to release in order to reduce the number of side-effects? (or how
should we REFINE present testing?)

It would seem that the NSVS scientists have more concern about fish than
the U.S. FDA has about vaccines harming children. With all the
complaints about the HPV vaccines causing harms, even deaths, to teenage
girls, the FDA apparently is not asking any questions!

Now, we get down to what, for me, was the “nitty-gritty” of the fish’s health issues:

They were concerned about animal welfare and the “quality of life” for the fish prior to slaughter.

That the side-effects from vaccines in fish were still occurring after 12 years of extensive use of vaccines, and people were eating vaccinated fish!

They want to find ways to refine present testing to reduce
side-effects! So, they realize that side effects still go on after 12
years, and continue to use vaccines. Duh!

I think I know how they can reduce all those vaccine side effects.
Eliminate the vaccines; take the fish out of farms, tanks, and pens and
let fish be fish! What’s happening with “farmed” fish confirms what
happens when corporate-food-production ‘innovates’ on the way in which
Nature intends for food production: free roaming; not-confined in close
quarters thereby promoting infectious diseases from exposure to filth;
and not being subjected to chemical intervention from feed or vaccines.

Vaccines for Other Animals

Other corporate-food-producers, e.g., egg production and chickens, are
notorious for cramped quarters, even stacked cages for egg-laying hens,
plus supplemented GMO feed ‘enhanced’ with antibiotics and other
chemicals for faster growth, or for earlier harvesting than would be
normal naturally. Merck & Company produces vaccines for chickens,
turkeys, and ducks. (Source)

Feed lots for cattle are another example of stress on animals grown for
food. Stress in any form enables or promotes animals from all genres to
produce stress-related hormones. Humans produce certain hormones like
cortisol and epinephrine. Furthermore, cortisol is also produced by
cattle! [2] Some researchers contend that animals in fear, or under
stress, produce excess adrenalin, cortisol-like excretions and
steroid-like hormones, which are secreted into their tissues and have
been found in their meat served to research lab animals. Here’s the “Beef cattle herd health vaccination schedule.”

In
the above information about fish vaccine adverse effects, it is
interesting to learn that two veterinary scientists seem concerned about
“quality of life” for fish prior to slaughter.

Animal vaccines for pets have been responsible for tumor growths at
injection sites, especially in cats. [3, 4] That’s why veterinarians
recommend vaccinating on cats’ limbs, so the limbs can be amputated, if
need be.

Vaccines are BIG business for both humans and animals, too. Here are just a few animal vaccination schedules:

Catherine retired from researching and writing, but felt compelled to write this article.

Catherine J Frompovich (website)
is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in
Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular
Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been
published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s.
Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with
co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and
holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare
researcher 35 years and counting.

For decades, climate scientists have been predicting that quantities of
ice in the South Pole would shrink in the face of climate change and
other global warming-related issues, but a recent study by scientists in
China has found that the ice levels have actually been growing in the
region over decades. RT’s Alexey Yaroshevsky has more on the controversy
from New York.

Temple University researchers have assembled the largest and most
accurate tree of life calibrated to time, and surprisingly, it reveals
that life has been expanding at a constant rate.

"The constant rate of diversification that we have found indicates
that the ecological niches of life are not being filled up and
saturated," said Temple professor S. Blair Hedges, a member of the
research team's study, published in the early online edition of the
journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. "This is contrary to
the popular alternative model which predicts a slowing down of
diversification as niches fill up with species."

The tree of life compiled by the Temple team is depicted in a new
way --- a cosmologically-inspired galaxy of life view --- and contains
more than 50,000 species in a tapestry spiraling out from the origin of
life.
For the massive meta-study effort, researchers painstakingly
assembled data from 2,274 molecular studies, with 96 percent published
in the last decade. They built new computer algorithms and tools to
synthesize this largest collection of evolutionary peer-reviewed species
diversity timelines published to date to produce this Time Tree of
Life.

The study also challenges the conventional view of adaptation being
the principal force driving species diversification, but rather,
underscores the importance of random genetic events and geographic
isolation in speciation, taking about 2 million years on average for a
new species to emerge onto the scene.

"This finding shows that speciation is more clock-like than people
have thought," said Hedges. "Taken together, this indicates that
speciation and diversification are separate processes from adaptation,
responding more to isolation and time. Adaptation is definitely
occurring, so this does not disagree with Darwinism. But it goes
against the popular idea that adaptation drives speciation, and against
the related concept of punctuated equilibrium which associates adaptive
change with speciation."

Besides the new evolutionary insights gained in this study, their
Timetree of Life will provide opportunities for researchers to make
other discoveries across disciplines, wherever an evolutionary
perspective is needed, including, for example, studies of disease and
medicine, and the effect of climate change on future species diversity.

Researchers around the world utilize molecular clocks to estimate
species divergence times, calculating DNA mutational rates with species
divergence times from gene and genomic sequences, that together with
the fossil record and geological history, provide a constantly improving
view of Darwin's "grandeur of life."

These new results add to the decade-long efforts of the Timetree of Life initiative (TTOL), which includes internet tools and a book,
led by team members Hedges and Sudhir Kumar. "The ultimate goal of the
TTOL is to chart the timescale of life -- to discover when each species
and all their ancestors originated, all the way back to the origin of
life some four billion years ago," said Hedges.

As an ongoing service to the scientific community, Hedges and
Kumar plan to continue adding new data to TTOL from future peer-reviewed
studies. They also will improve their current tools, such as web and
smartphone apps, and develop new tools, that will make it easier to
access the information and to explore the TTOL, and for scientists to
update the growing tree with their new data.

###

Besides Hedges and Kumar, other members of the research team that
published this new article included Julie Marin, Michael Suleski, and
Madeline Paymer.

Newly-obtained emails reveal that Oklahoma geologists were pressured
by oil industry big-shots not to push on with their assessments of
possible links between earthquakes in the state and hydraulic fracturing
industry, most often referred to as fracking.

More than a year since a sharp spike in earthquakes in the
region, which coincided with fracking for oil and gas, the
Oklahoma Geological Survey say there might be a possible link.
The rise resulted in magnitude 3 earthquakes almost twice daily
on average – three times as many as in disaster-prone California.

But after the body issued a joint statement with the USGS in
October 2013, saying that "activities such as wastewater
disposal" could be a “contributing factor to the
increase in earthquakes,” oil execs started to panic,
according to newly-obtained emails by EnergyWire.

This allegedly led to the OGS avoiding mentioning that the lion’s
share of earthquakes in the region was man-made. The silence has
lasted since 2010 and was apparently due to pressure not to
disclose the findings.

OGS geologist at the University of Oklahoma, Austin Holland, was
one of the scientists aware of the link, but earlier did not wish
to discuss it for lack of direct scientific proof.

It now turns out he was later being influenced by oil executives
with a vested interest in the continuation of fracking in the
area, according to the obtained emails.

“Researchers in Oklahoma, notably Austin Holland… have
repeatedly said the increase in seismic activity cannot be fully
explained by man-made causes,” Oklahoma Independent
Petroleum Association (OIPA) President Mike Terry said in a 2013
statement, pointing to Holland’s earlier scientific skepticism.

That statement coincided with Holland’s research, which found
disturbing data from the southern town of Marietta, but stopped
short of wholeheartedly acknowledging the fracking and earthquake
link.

But when the OGS cautiously joined the USGS assessment in
admitting that there was a relationship between fracking and
growing seismic risks, Austin Holland was called into meetings
with his boss at the university, President David Boren, and the
Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC). He spoke with Jack Stark
of the OCC, then also vice president of exploration at
Continental Resources.

The OCC is the main regulatory body for oil and gas in the state.

Reuters / Gareth Fuller

Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm – the University of
Oklahoma’s leading financial donor – started getting really
interested in the findings around that time. Hamm, who was Mitt
Romney’s energy adviser, is not a believer in the relationship
between seismic activity and the oil and gas industry.

The joint statement by OGS/USGS aroused fear in the oil execs, as
Holland recounted in one of the emails from 2013.

He was trying to explain to Continental and the OCC that his
input only benefited the USGS assessment, but that
"Continental does not feel induced seismicity is an issue and
they are nervous about any dialog about the subject," as he
wrote to his superiors at the university.

"They are in the denial phase that this is a
possibility,” he wrote of the execs.

One of the people also dissatisfied with the Oklahoma geologists
partnering up with the USGS was Patrice Doubles, the OCC
commissioner. At the time, she was running for Congress and got
more campaign funds from Continental than almost any other
senator. That included money from Hamm.

As Holland explained in the email, Douglas said that she wished
to “of course, protect the safety of Oklahomans, but also
balance that with industry in the state.”

Earlier this year, in the Washington Post, Holland did admit that
higher-ups were trying to influence his work – specifically,
Hamm. In fact, according to a piece by fellow geologist Bob
Jackman, Holland told him at the time: “you don’t understand
– Harold Hamm and others will not allow me to say certain
things.”

Holland later tried to downplay Jackman’s quote to EnergyWire,
but Jackman later said he had written down Holland’s confession
word for word immediately after the conversation.

A few other geologists have spoken out about the relationship
between Hunton dewatering operations and a rise in earthquakes in
the vicinity of Oklahoma City. They have also been warning that a
surge in smaller quakes could increase the likelihood of greater
ones.

Unlike other states where fracking is also commonplace, Oklahoma
did little in the way of caps or regulations or shutdowns.
Instead, reports emerged that state authorities limited such
powers to information-gathering missions.

According to EnergeyWire, the view on Oklahoma having
fracking-related earthquakes is shared by many academic and
federal seismologists.

These new revelations come on the heels of fresh data
from Oklahoma that has the US Geological Survey pointing to a
clear scientific link between quakes and fracking.

A newly discovered fossil has shaken up science’s view of human
evolution and could be the missing link between apes and humans: 400,000
years older than the oldest human bone found, the discovery could
entirely rewrite our story.

For decades scientists have been stumped on the gap between
humans that walked bent over and those that walked upright. Who
was the mysterious ancestor that joined the ape-like
Australopithecus with the human-like Homo? We could be looking at
an answer. It now appears the timeline for earliest upright
humans goes back not to 2.3 – but to 2.8 million years.

An Ethiopian student at Arizona State University and an
accompanying research team discovered the lower jawbone and five
teeth in Ethiopia in 2013. Now, for the first time, the findings
have been published in twopapers simultaneously, while a third supprorted the notion that this could indeed
be a unique species, and not a Homo habilis.

The fragments definitely belong to the Homo lineage (of which we
are the only remainder), but scientists are puzzled about what
the species exactly is. In fact, it could turn out to be a
completely new one.

Found 250 miles from Addis Ababa, the fragments are believed to
belong to our ancestor from when the current dry land was still
wetlands, interspersed with trees providing shade and rivers
nourishing them. It was discovered not too far from another
famous find – Lucy, the ape-like Austrolapithecus afarensis,
known to be the earliest potential ancestor of the human family.

That transition between the two types is the first time in our
history we switched from bashing things with rocks to actually
using our brains to solve puzzles, although there was another
transitional type – the crude and less brainy Paranthropus –
thought to have appeared just before the transition to Homo.

Chalachew Seyoum of ASU, screenshot
from video, Arizona State University

"There is a big gap in the fossil record between about 2.5
million and 3 million years ago — there's virtually nothing
relating to the ancestors of Homo from that time period, in spite
of a lot of people looking," study co-author and one of the
leaders of the team, Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada,
told Live Science.

Now, for the first time, the 700,000-year hole between Lucy-like
and Homo-type humans is beginning to fill up with information.

“This is a little piece of the puzzle that opens the door to
new types of questions and field investigations that we can go
after to try to find additional evidence to fill in this poorly
known time period,” ASU Institute of Human Origins director
William H. Kimbel said in the press release.

“It’s an excellent case of a transitional fossil in a
critical time period in human evolution,” he added.
The nature of the new find is not without its naysayers: some
scientists have posited that the fossil actually belongs to the
well-known species of Homo habilis –the earliest known member of
the Homo lineage. But careful digital processing has shown that
these are not Homo habilis fragments and they in fact belong to a
creature that came shortly before it.

It took years for scientists to get to where they are now. The
research started in 2002 with painstaking surveying. The
scientists were careful not to disturb anything unnecessarily.
“So it took us basically 13 years to find this [human
ancestor]. It doesn’t mean that the work that we did was wasted
up until that time. But when we did find this [jaw], we were
pretty excited that after all this time it actually worked
out,” assistant professor and co-author Chris Campisano
said.

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

The expectation was that if they were to dig around the area,
they would find Lucy’s contemporaries – not what looked like the
missing link.

“We first started collecting fossils in the area around where
the jaw was eventually found in 2012,” Campisano went on.
“When we realized how old the sediments were, we thought we
might be able to find more specimens of Lucy’s species and figure
out what happened to that lineage. Instead, we were rewarded with
a much more exciting discovery.”

“Honestly, it was an exciting moment…I had good experience in
field surveying and knew where potential sediments are. I climbed
up a little plateau and found this specimen right on the edge of
the hill,” said Chalachew Seyoum, the student behind the
find.

What we know for sure, according to Professor Kaye Reed of ASU,
is that the creature walked on two legs and lived in eastern
Africa. Diet and tool use are very important logical next steps
to understanding just how clever this ancestor was.

The research continues at ASU for other fossils around the same
area to find answers to those questions.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Unearthed articles from the 1960s detail how nuclear waste was buried
beneath the Earth’s surface by Halliburton & Co. for decades as a
means of disposing the by-products of post-World War II atomic energy
production.

Fracking is already a controversial practice on its face; allowing
U.S. industries to inject slurries of toxic, potentially carcinogenic
compounds deep beneath the planet’s surface — as a means of “see no
evil” waste disposal — already sounds ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid
anyway without even going into further detail.

Alleged fracking links to the contamination of the public water
supply and critical aquifers, as well as ties to earthquake upticks near
drilling locations that are otherwise not prone to seismic activity
have created uproar in the years since the 2005 “Cheney loophole,”
which allowed the industry to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act by
exempting fracking fluids, thus fast tracking shale fracking as a
source of cheap natural gas.

Now, it is apparent that the fracking industry is also privvy to many
secrets of the nuclear energy industry, and specifically, where the
bodies are buried, err… dangerous nuclear waste is buried, rather —
waste that atomic researchers have otherwise found so difficult to
eliminate.
Truthstream uncovered several published newspaper accounts from the
Spring of 1964 concerning a then-newly disclosed plan to dump nuclear
waste produced by the atomic energy industry into hydraulic fracturing
(fracking) wells using a cement slurry technique developed by
Halliburton & Co. The top two fracking companies in the nation at
the time were Halliburton and Dowell, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

And here we thought fracking was a relatively new industrial
phenomenon growing in popularity over just the last couple of decades.
Boy were we wrong. Revealed within these articles is Halliburton’s
long-standing relationship with the secret government and deep ties
between the oil and nuclear industries.

Teaming up with the U.S. Government and Union Carbide Corp., who
operate nuclear materials divisions at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratories in Tennessee, Halliburton was then credited with “solving”
the radioactive waste problem faced by America’s secretive nuclear
industry. Dumping waste via fracking had apparently been going on since
1960, according to the reports, but was only made public here in 1964.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Each of the articles Truthstream found carry the same account under
different headlines, with four of them using identical copy, and the
fifth, published in the San Antonio Express, slightly rewritten based
upon the same source information. The photo captions of each story also
add some useful tidbits:

These ran in the:

April 19, 1964 edition of the Great Bend Tribune,
the April 22, 1964 edition of the Warren Times-Mirror,
the April 26, 1964 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal,
the May 3, 1964 edition of the San Antonio Express News (original)
and the June 15, 1964 edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

The story read, in part:

“Two techniques originated by the
petroleum industry for its own uses are expected to solve a major
problem in the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The
problem is the disposal of dangerous, sometimes deadly, radioactive
waste by-products.”

“Researchers at Halliburton Co’s.
Technical Center here working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory
scientists, have combined the oil well cementing technique with the
hydraulic fracturing production stimulation technique to entomb
radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet
underground.”

“The method used at Oak Ridge begins by
mixing the waste with a cement slurry, pumping the mixture down a hole
drilled into the Conasuaga shale and then fracturing the shale to create
a horizontal crack. The crack fills with the mixture to form a thin,
horizontal sheet several hundred feet across. The mix sets to
permanently hold the radioactive waste in the formation.”

“Union Carbide Corp., which operates
facilities at Oak Ridge for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and
Halliburton, which provides specialized oil field services such as
cementing fracturing worldwide, have collaborated on the project since
1960.”

The mix remained liquid for 48 hours before it was supposed to permanently set and remain there, entombed, forever.

The articles make clear that the Atomic Energy Commission was
preparing to use fracking as a means of disposing of nuclear wastes at
additional facilities, with Oak Ridge being simply one of the largest,
and the first to publicly disclose these out-of-sight disposal
procedures:

“Oak Ridge has a radioactive waste
disposal problem typical of the nation’s nuclear sites. Each year about
four million gallons of waste, including such fission products as
strontium 90, cesium 137 and ruthenium 103, are generated at Oak Ridge.”

“Among the disposal methods already tried
have been dumping concrete-encased barrels of waste in the ocean or
burying the waste in lead-lined containers. These are considered either
too dangerous or too expensive or both.”

Unfortunately, the ocean has been used as a giant trashcan not only
by the nuclear industry, but municipal garbage and landfill companies
and many other entities as well, without any real concern about its
significant effects on the food supply and larger ecosystem of the
planet.

“If this process is successful for
disposal of Oak Ridge National Laboratory intermediate-level wastes, it
has potential application at other atomic energy sites where suitable
geological conditions exist,” the Atomic Energy Commission says.”

The slightly different version in the San Antonio Express News added these details:

“A couple of techniques used by oilmen
when they have hopes of production may soon be used by the Atomic Energy
Commission for – of all things – radioactive garbage disposal.”

“Final tests are now under way at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, in trying a combination of oil
well cementing plus hydraulic fracturing to entomb radioactive wastes in
an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

Meanwhile, the Great Bend Tribune added information about the
Halliburton executives involved in the plan in their caption for a photo
which shows businessmen looking at a diagram explaining how nuclear
waste like strontium 90 is mixed with cement and injected into shale
formations:

“Halliburton engineer Mack Stogner, left,
reviews the project with Harry P. Conroy, senior vice president and
general manager of the oil field service firm, and W.D. Owsley, senior
vice president.”

The process includes remote controlled operation of the hydraulic
fracturing drill in order to shield workers from the “medium level”
radioactive substances being dumped into the earth’s crust, as the
Warren Times Mirror in Pennsylvania notes in the caption:

“Disposing of Waste – Working behind
shielding and wearing film badges, Halliburton Company personnel use
demounted oil field service units to dispose of radioactive waste
generated at the Oak Ridge, Tenn. nuclear site.”

How often this procedure has been used at other facilities since then
is not entirely clear, though we know from reports discussed below that
the practice continued and there is no indication that it ever stopped.

Five years later, the October 22, 1969 edition of the San Bernardino
County Sun carried a report titled, “3 Ways to Manage Radioactive
Waste.”

It discussed the ongoing and growing problems with nuclear waste,
naming three principle strategies for managing the toxic stuff, summed
up as “(1) delay and decay, (2) concentrate and confine and (3) dilute
and disperse,” discussing how materials with lower half lives can
supposedly be safely sequestered and later dumped, while other materials
can be simply diluted and poured into existing groundwater supplies and
systems.

The UPI story originating out of Oak Ridge states, in part,

“Since the start of the atomic era in the
1940s, nuclear reactors around the nation have produced 75 million
gallons of hazardous high level radioactive waste materials.”

“And scientists here and elsewhere around
the nation still are wrestling with the problems of what to do with
this material, which promises to become even more plentiful as more and
more commercial nuclear reactors go into power production.”

Oak Ridge proclaims that it found a solution to dealing with high level nuclear wastes, which has thus far been to keep it,

“…buried a few feet underground in
storage tanks – tanks which must be periodically replaced because of the
natural deterioration of the steel and other materials of which they
are fabricated.”

“It is in this area of confining the high
level wastes, whose radioactive half life ranges up to 30 to 50 years,
that the Atomic Energy Commission is pushing dramatic new concepts.”

“One disposal system, involving materials
in the medium range of radioactivity, is the hydraulic fracturing
procedures. This system is now being used at Oak Ridge and involves
mixing the liquid radioactive waste with concrete to form a grout which
is pumped into shale formations 500 to 800 feet underground.”

Note, this article cites a shallower depth, at levels as shallow as
500 feet, after the 1964 articles claimed a further removed depth of
1,000 feet to 5,000. The even “higher level wastes” were disposed of in
abandoned salt mines, according to Oak Ridge.

Nuclear Waste ‘Safely Flushed Away’ into the Water Supply

The 1969 article states that “low level waste” is “material which can
safely be flushed away into rivers and lakes or released into the
atmosphere because the level of radioactivity is so low that is presents
no hazard when diluted and flushed into man’s natural environment. The
more difficult problem is involved in the high level, liquid and solid
wastes which are produced in the reprocessing of used fuel elements from
nuclear reactor cores.”

The idea that the waste dumped into water supplies was so “low level”
as to be completely harmless is likely dubious and hopeful at best.
Fluoride, a by-product of the nuclear power industry, was one of those
constituents, and was transformed from being known as a rat poison to
being known as a dental benefit by the original spin doctor and
propagandist, Edward Bernays.

In his book “The Fluoride Deception,”
author Christopher Bryson revealed how the nuclear industry also used
fluoridation of the public water supply as a means of secretly dumping
industrial waste after fluoride was a major by-product in the uranium
enrichment process for building the atomic bomb. Bryson told Democracy Now:

The Manhattan Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium.
That’s how they did it. The biggest industrial building in the world,
for a time, was the fluoride gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the
Manhattan Project and Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the
Manhattan Project, were scared stiff less that workers would realize
that the fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants
was going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key — the
key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be jeopardized
because the Manhattan Project and the industrial contractors making the
atomic bomb would be facing all these lawsuits from workers, all these
lawsuits from farmers living around these industrial plants and so
Harold Hodge assures us that fluoride is safe and good for children.

More recently, an Associated Press investigation
found in 2011 that 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the United States were
leaking tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, into groundwater
supplies via corroded pipes and tunnels. AP found at least 37 locations
were in direct violation of federal drinking water standards for
tritium, in some cases hundreds of times over.

Fracking Nuclear Waste ‘Safe for Millions of Years’… Unless It Leaks

Some 30 trillion gallons of toxic waste has been kept out of sight,
out of mind by U.S. industries that have injected it hundreds and
thousands of feet underground into wells since the 1960s.

Scientists who work for these corporations have used computer
modeling to assure the Environmental Protection Agency that this waste
poses no threat to our aquifers and that layers of rock deep within the
Earth would safely store this stuff like Tupperware for millenia.

Already, several incidents have proven that scientific computer models are no match for reality.

It is clear from a December 21, 1973 article that disposal of nuclear
waste via fracking continued, along with promises that it would be safe
for millions of years to come.

The Dixon Evening Telegraph wrote in “Geologists look at energy crunch”:

“The U.S. Government is disposing of
approximately 250,000 gallons of intermediate-level wastes each year
using a technique called hydraulic fracturing. Liquids are pumped into
impervious shales 1,000 to 5,000 feet below the surface. High pressure
is applied causing the rocks to fracture and the liquid moves out
laterally. Because the rock and radioactive wastes it contains will not be exposed to the biosphere for millions of years, this method should be safe unless leakage into an overlying aquifer occurs.”

That is, as the article points out, unless there are leaks.

As we found in research, leakage is exactly what has happened time
and again throughout the years, including at disposal sites for Oak
Ridge National Laboratories, according to reports in the following
cases.

In April, 1967 pesticide waste injected by a chemical plant at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal destabilized a seismic fault, causing a magnitude 5.0 earthquake
— strong enough to shatter windows and close schools — and jolting
scientists with newfound risks of injection, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.

A year later, a corroded hazardous waste
well for pulping liquor at the Hammermill Paper Co., in Erie, Pa.,
ruptured. Five miles away, according to an EPA report, “a noxious black liquid seeped from an abandoned gas well” in Presque Isle State Park.

In 1975 in Beaumont, Texas, dioxin and a highly acidic herbicide injected underground by the Velsicol Chemical Corp.
burned a hole through its well casing, sending as much as five million
gallons of the waste into a nearby drinking water aquifer.

And these are hardly the only examples… in fact, it is just
scratching the surface of an issue that is almost as incomprehensible as
it is unfathomable.

Then in August 1984 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., radioactive waste was turned up by water monitoring near a deep injection well at a government nuclear facility.

Bingo…

There it is. The infallible, permanent, and “impermeable” deep
injection wells that Halliburton and the Atomic Energy Commission
considered as a solution to nuclear waste for eons to come were found
turning up radioactive nuclear waste at the very Oak Ridge site where
these 1960s disposal projects were taking place.

Subterranean Waste Disposal a ‘Cornerstone of the Nation’s Economy’

Those cemented wells, filled with injected disposal substances may be
safely secured for a few years or even decades, but that is no
guarantee for the years down the road and its certainly not the millenia
as promised by Halliburton and others in the industry. In fact, many of
the wells have been forgotten, abandoned, and are lost to the record
books.
As ProPublica reports:

There are upwards of 2 million abandoned and plugged oil and gas wells
in the U.S., more than 100,000 of which may not appear in regulators’
records. Sometimes they are just broken off tubes of steel, buried or
sticking out of the ground. Many are supposed to be sealed shut with
cement, but studies show that cement breaks down over time, allowing
seepage up the well structure.

And many of these are injection wells, where all kinds of unwanted,
toxic substances are dumped in order to be forgotten… though not
necessarily gone.

Not only are these practices taking place, they are widespread… and
widely defended, even with the known failures and safety issues.

Many scientists and regulators say the
alternatives to the injection process — burning waste, treating
wastewater, recycling, or disposing of waste on the surface — are far
more expensive or bring additional environmental risks.

Subterranean waste disposal, they
point out, is a cornerstone of the nation’s economy, relied on by the
pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical industries. It’s also critical to a future less dependent on foreign oil: Hydraulic fracturing, “clean coal” technologies, nuclear fuel production
and carbon storage (the keystone of the strategy to address climate
change) all count on pushing waste into rock formations below the
earth’s surface. (source)

Sure, maybe it’s better than dumping it directly into the waterways,
but still. This isn’t just playing with fire, this is playing with the
lives of everyone in the nation for generations to come.

Please read ProPublica’s full series of reports on this, starting here. Things have to change.

These people should not have started messing with something they did not know how to fully and safely manage.

How long can this madness continue until it winds up tainting every drinking glass in America?

Engineer Mario Salazar, who worked as a technical expert for 25 years
with the EPA’s underground injection program in Washington, told
ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten something that should give us all pause
about how radioactive nuclear waste and industrial pollutants in general
are being handled, and where they may ultimately end up:

“In 10 to 100 years we are going
to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted. A lot of people
are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

We need GMOs to feed the world like a fish needs dry land. A
controversial farmer in California is proving that a veritable bumper
crop can be had using new farming methods that don’t require GMO pesticides, herbicides, or even weeding, and require 10 times less water than the average farm. The best part – he earned $100K per acre last season without even harvesting all of his land.

What kind of super-fertilizer allows Paul Kaiser to grow so much food on a mere 8 acres? Lot’s of rotten food scraps and rotten plants – otherwise known as compost. And he uses loads of it.

He uses farming practices both old, and cutting-edge-new so well that agricultural specialists
from University of California at Davis who have tested his top soil can
drive a four-foot steel pole all the way through his fields. This, as
opposed to most parts of California, where it would hit infertile
hard-pan in less than 12 inches.

Last year, Kaiser’s farm located in Sonoma Valley, CA grossed more than $100,000 an acre, too. This is ten times the average for most farmers of this area, even in lucrative wine-country.

His farm is no mega-farm, either. At just under 8 acres, he is
beating even other large organic farms because the soil is still so
damaged in other conventional and organic farms alike. He is certainly
out-performing Big Ag methods of farming as his unique farming practices
have turned the soil into a goldmine.

Kaiser also doesn’t plow his fields (which means a lot less work) and
he uses around 10 times less water than his peers. His neighbors still
run sprinklers, but he waters for about an hour a week, using almost
exclusively drip irrigation. This means that while California is still
recovering from a drought, most farmers are watering the air – since
most of the water is lost to evaporation. Kaiser is watering – how novel
an idea – just his plants.

Kaiser uses a thick, acrylic blanket to keep both soil and compost piles
covered. Most farmers, if the cover soil at all, us immense plastic
sheets, which end up each year in the landfill. “These blankets last me
10 years!”

Many California farmers recently spent millions tanking in water to
try to save their crops, while Kaiser just made a healthy annual salary
for even most high-paid lawyers. Water was being sold on the black market for ridiculous prices, but you can bet Kaiser wasn’t paying them.

Kaiser is a bit of a mad genius, and a dreamer, too. He rattles off
statistics at local talks he gives about exactly how he grows so
sustainably, often including surprising facts. For example, he leaves
his roots in the ground after harvest to feed the worms. He sounds a bit
like a Martin Luther King for growing green:

“Sustainable farming methods are just one corner,” he
said. “Economic sustainability is another, and social sustainability is
the third.”

During a recent Sunday
farmers’ market, representatives of several different agricultural
organizations approached Kaiser, each asking him for advice. Now, when
billed for talks, he often packs the house.

Kaiser envisions small farms near every city around the globe, even
in the most dry, arid climates, and with the proof of his own sweat, and
soil, I believe his dream is possible.

February 2015 – OKLAHOMA - A
lawsuit claims that Oklahoma’s great increase in earthquake activity
has been caused by pumping waste from drilling operations back
underground. The suit involves the largest measured quake in the history
of the state, a 5.6 tremor that happened in Prague, east of Oklahoma
City in November 2011. As the volume of drilling waste pumped
underground has grown, the number of earthquakes with magnitude 3 or
higher has increased. In particular, as the drilling has intensified
along the northern border, the quakes have followed. The Prague 5.6
magnitude quake in 2011 had one 4.8 magnitude foreshock and one 4.8
magnitude aftershock.

The Prague 5.6 magnitude quake had one
4.8 magnitude foreshock and one 4.8 magnitude aftershock. Altogether
there were 63 quakes of magnitude 3 or higher, concentrated mostly in
the center of the state, where the 860 million barrels of waste pumping
was centered. Drilling activity increased in northern Oklahoma but the
34 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater remained concentrated in the
center of the state. Waste pumping increased to more than 1.2 billion
barrels, with a big increase in the north. Earthquakes surged with 106
magnitude 3 or greater, including a string of quakes in the north of the
state, where waste pumping also increased as the statewide volume rose
to more than 1.5 billion barrels. The rate of quakes multiplied with 567
jolts at least magnitude 3 with the heaviest concentration in the
northern end of the state. Waste-pumping data for 2014 is not yet
available. –Washington Post

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The biggest players in the food industry—from pesticide pushers to
fertilizer makers to food processors and manufacturers—spend billions of
dollars every year not selling food, but selling the idea that we need
their products to feed the world. But, do we really need industrial
agriculture to feed the world? Can sustainably grown food deliver the
quantity and quality we need—today and in the future? Our first Food
MythBusters film takes on these questions in under seven minutes. So
next time you hear them, you can too.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Departing active region 12290 prior to turning off the solar disk
unleashed two moderate M-Class Solar Flares this evening. An M3.7
eruption at 15:28 UTC and M4.1 at 19:31
UTC. A spectacular Halo Coronal Mass Ejection followed spewing safely
out into space and will not have any earth directed component due to the
proximity of the blast site being at right angles or 90 degrees to the
earth.

Monday, March 2, 2015

A bacteria affecting olive trees in Italy may soon spread to other
olive oil-producing countries of southern Europe, industry officials
warn. The blight came from the Americas and is aggravating an already
bad harvest for Italian olive growers.

The bacteria, called
Xylella fastidiosa, or olive leaf scorch, have affected thousands
of trees in Italy's southernmost Apulia region. The microbe
hampers fluid movement in affected plants, making their leaves
and branches dry out and die. Insects spread the disease to new
plants.

According to the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), the
problem already affecting Italy may soon spread to other EU
nations, unless contamination procedures are implemented. But
Italian olive growers say the government will not allocate money
to tackle the problem.

"If it expands its range further, the entire Mediterranean
basin risks being contaminated," Giovanni Melcarne, the
president of an oil-producing consortium in Otranto, was quoted
by The Telegraph as saying on Friday.

Since the bacterium was first detected in Italy in September
2013, it has spread dramatically from 8,000 hectares to 230,000
hectares. Olive trees as old as 1,000 years, which are considered
a national heritage in Italy, are affected.

There is no cure for the disease and combatting it has a cost
both in monetary terms and in terms of environmental damage.
Stopping the aphid carriers from traveling to new areas requires
creating wide stripes of ploughed soil treated with insecticides
around the contaminated areas.

Reuters / Jon Nazca

The spread of the bacterium is facilitated by Italy's long-time
tradition of planting olive trees along the roads, which now
gives the infection ready routes.

“There is serious concern that this disease could spread from the
Apulia region as it has been increasing in the last few months,”
Enrico Brivio, a European Commission spokesman, told the
Guardian. “We will evaluate the situation and decide if
additional measures are necessary at a standing committee meeting
on the 19-20 January.”

The Xylella outbreak coincides with a particularly bad year for
Italian olive growers last year. An unusually cold and wet summer
meant that olive trees lost many buds. And those that managed to
produce olives were attacked by olive fly, which lays its larvae
in the olives.

"It's a disaster of Biblical proportions," Johnny Madge,
a British producer who has been making olive oil in the Sabine
Hills region, north of Rome, told the Telegraph. "In this
region, production will be almost zero."

The harvest was the worst in decades, down 40 to 50 percent. With
Italy and Spain accounting for some 70 percent of Europe's olive
output, industry organizations warn of an imminent price hike.

On THURSDAY5 March 2015,
CTNBio, the agency that regulates GMOs in Brazil, will decide on an
industry request to legalize the commercial development of genetically
engineered eucalyptus trees.CTNBio may approve this commercial release of genetically engineered (GE) eucalyptus.

That is, UNLESS there’s enough pressure, both nationally and globally, to change their mind.If this request is approved, it will be
an unprecedented decision, with devastating social and environmental
impacts not only for Brazil but around the world.

In the US, a similar request to the
USDA from GE tree company ArborGen to legalize their GE eucalyptus trees
is currently pending, and doubtless the US will be paying close
attention to this decision in Brazil.

We need you to help stop this disaster!

We are mobilizing an Emergency Day of Action to STOP GE Trees NEXT TUESDAY, March 3rd and we need your help to make it a success!Here’s how you can take part on Tuesday:

Go to the Brazilian Embassy or Consulate nearest to you (see list of locations at the bottom of this post).

Bring signs, banners and some friends. Use these simple slogans (please use both English and Portuguese):

Brazil: No GMO Trees! / Brasil: Não às árvores transgênicas!

Brazil: STOP GMO Trees! / Brasil: Parem as árvores transgênicas!

Take some photos of you and your group with signs and banners in front of the Embassy or Consulate andsend them to us by 2 PM EST (19:00 GMT) on Tuesday. This is crucial! We’ll include what we get in our press release on the action and any other media we produce.

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